DHAKA, Bangladesh—On two floors of an olive green building with insufficient emergency exits and a too narrow fire escape, women in Saifur Rahman's factory sew fleece sweatshirts for European shoppers.

Yet the global brands whose clothes he makes don't always know about him, Mr. Rahman says. Often, he says, they believe their clothes were made at bigger factories—ones they have vetted for safety—located miles away.

Mr. Rahman gets the work because sometimes the original factories decide to subcontract it out. Maybe they have taken on too many orders, or fear missing a deadline.

Mr. Rahman acknowledges his factory doesn't meet all safety standards. His cutting room, for example, has only one emergency exit where it should, by law, have two. His workers are also sitting too close together, according to Bangladeshi law, and an exterior escape staircase is several inches too narrow. During one recent visit, these steps were slippery with food scraps.

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Mr. Rahman's factory is one of a spreading network of subcontractors who play a central role in the world's garment trade. This is particularly true in Bangladesh, where Wal-Mart Stores Inc.,WMT-0.25%H & M Hennes & MauritzHMB0.85% AB and Zara make some of their clothes.

Garment-trade veterans say the industry simply wouldn't run without these subcontractors. As for Mr. Rahman—a former garment worker himself who saved up and opened his own plant four years ago—someday, he says, he intends to run a first-class facility.

"The workers, staff and owner will live there, eat there, do everything together," Mr. Rahman says. He described his "dream" factory as having housing, an artificial lake and lots of parking. "It would be like a family."

In recent months, he says, he has improved worker conditions. But until earlier this year, he says, he wasn't even aware he was supposed to give his roughly 260 workers a certain number of sick days.

The spread of poorly regulated subcontractors is one of the main problems in a garment trade that has suffered deadly accidents. In April, the Rana Plaza factory complex in Bangladesh collapsed, burying more than one thousand people. Over the past eight months, factory fires have killed about 130 people.

Meantime, retailers sometimes have little idea where some of their clothes are made. Many retailers don't maintain the manpower in Dhaka or other garment hubs to regularly check on factories that are supposed to be making their clothes.

"An order could be produced in 20 different units and it comes to one place for final inspection," says Zulficar Ali, executive director at the Bangladesh office of U.K.-based Synergies Worldwide, a buying house that works with manufacturers to fill orders for retailers.

Retailers including Wal-Mart, Gap Inc., H&M, Inditex SAIDEXY2.14%'s Zara and others say they have strict rules about subcontracting. For instance, manufacturers who deal directly with retailers typically sign a code of conduct that requires them to disclose subcontractors so that those factories can be inspected.

But people familiar with the industry say manufacturers that are running late often skip the disclosures to save time. Approving a factory for subcontracting generally happens after auditors can make unannounced visits to manufacturers, but that can take several weeks to set up and complete.

Western brands have blamed unauthorized subcontracting in the past when their clothes were found in factories where disaster struck. After a fire in November in Bangladesh that killed more than 110 workers, Wal-Mart girls' shorts were discovered in the charred ruins. Wal-Mart said its authorized manufacturer, which it later dismissed, had subcontracted without its knowledge.

Two months later, labels for brands sold by Spain's Inditex, Zara's parent, were found at another Bangladesh factory fire. The company said the order had been subcontracted without permission.

At Rana Plaza, orders were being filled for some brands, such as French label Camaïeu, in the building without their permission, the companies say. Other retailers, including Italy's Benetton SpA, say they had given permission for one-time subcontracting or trial use of factories in Rana Plaza.

When a Wall Street Journal reporter visited Mr. Rahman's Texco Fashion Wear Ltd. factory in May and June, he was working on orders for several foreign retailers. His factory was making black fleece sweatshirts for German discounter KiK and men's jersey shirts for the label Avant Première for Swiss department-store chain Manor AG.

Mr. Rahman, 47 years old, says two foreign orders in his factory came from larger factories that sought his help because of political and worker unrest that led to production delays. He said one of the orders came to him from a local buying agency, a firm that places retailers' orders with manufacturers.

The buying agency confirmed working with Mr. Rahman, and an executive described him as "motivated," saying he had requested an audit in order to improve his business.

One of the factories identified by Mr. Rahman as sending the business his way denied subcontracting to him. The second factory said an employee no longer with the firm had subcontracted a small project to Texco, on a "test basis," without informing management.

KiK Textilien und Non-Food GmbH said Mr. Rahman's factory wasn't authorized to make its clothes and that it wasn't aware its products were being made there. "This was an illegal subcontracting for which we have zero tolerance," a spokeswoman said.

Michael Arretz of KiK said the company investigated and found that the original factory faced delays partly because labor strikes at a port had held up the needed fabric. KiK said it would fine the factory that sent the work to Texco €5,000 ($6,600).

Mr. Rahman said he believes retailers should be informed about the work sent to him. He said he also believes retailers' local agents often know of the subcontracting but don't tell the retailer for fear of losing future orders.

Manor AG, which is part of Maus Frères SA, owner of the Lacoste label, confirmed that its China sourcing office had placed a small order with Texco, via a Bangladesh agent, for its Avant Première label. It said it has since decided not to place new orders after efforts to improve standards at the factory fell short.

Those efforts included a February visit to the factory by its China-based sourcing office, and an independent audit in January. The audit showed "massive breaches of our code of conduct at Texco," said Elle Steinbrecher of Manor. Manor's sourcing office made a list of repairs and improvements for Texco to retain its business, she said.

But when the head of Manor's sourcing office in China paid a second visit to the factory, in April, it found the improvements hadn't been made, Ms. Steinbrecher said.

Mr. Rahman confirmed the visits and acknowledged he hadn't made all the changes sought, such as creating the second cutting-room exit. He said he wanted to make the improvements but can't add another exit until his landlord carries out paving work around the building.

Nor is Mr. Rahman able to provide more space between rows of machines, as he says Manor advised, because the rooms are too small. He says he can't get more space unless another factory leaves the building.

Manor declined to say what changes it sought. A spokeswoman said the two sides disagree on what the safety violations are.

Putting a number on the subcontractors in Bangladesh and other garment-producing nations is tough. But executives, activists and retailers say use of unauthorized subcontractors is pervasive. As many as half of the roughly 5,000 factories in Bangladesh are subcontractors, local industry officials say.

Rubana Huq, managing director of the Mohammadi Group, a large company that says it makes clothes for prominent global brands, estimated that just 2,000 of Bangladesh's factories get export contracts. "The rest do subcontracting," she said.

It is easy to see why subcontracting is common. If approved factories miss a shipping deadline, they may have to rush the shipment by airfreight, at their own expense, or give the buyer a 5% discount as a penalty.

Depending on the clothes, that is a stiff punishment. Garment buyers said profit margins for basic items hover around 3% to 4%, or about four cents for a plain T-shirt, though they can hit the double digits on more elaborate knit clothes.

Also, Mr. Rahman and others in the industry say some manufacturers intentionally overbook their factories. "The biggest factories take orders based on subcontracting capacity. They may have a two million capacity and they'll take orders for four million," said Habib Hirji, managing director of the Bangladesh office of Synergies Worldwide, a buying house.

Retailers say they are becoming stricter after Rana Plaza. Already many are conducting structural inspections of factories they use. A group of 70 mostly European retailers has pledged to sign a binding agreement through which they agree not to hire manufacturers whose factories don't meet safety standards.

In July the group said at it was recruiting a fire inspector. The accord proposes to make public the findings of safety inspections.

Many subcontractors may be unable to satisfy many new requirements, says Joynal Abedin, a former garment worker who is now a middleman who helps factories outsource. Mr. Abedin, who has sent work to Mr. Rahman in the past, says that in a good month he subcontracts as many as 80,000 pieces of clothing, earning about one to two cents per piece.

He estimates that only about half the factories he works with will be able to meet stricter building safety standards. Structural improvements, in particular, are difficult and costly, he says.

Mr. Rahman says he hopes to make enough improvements to appeal to retailers directly, leaving behind the subcontracting work, which doesn't pay as well. The eldest son of farmers, Mr. Rahman said he dreamed of opening his own business since his first job keeping attendance at a garment factory more than 20 years ago, where he earned 1,200 Bangladesh taka a month, or about $15. Eventually, he became a production supervisor.

In 2005, Mr. Rahman and three friends leased a factory in the building where he now operates. He and some new partners eventually took over the space. They spent three million taka, or about $40,000, half of which was Mr. Rahman's, to get started.

In the early years, Mr. Rahman acknowledges he didn't pay a lot of attention to worker-protection laws. His main concern was staying afloat.

But he says he wants to upgrade his place to more closely resemble the big factories he has worked at. He hired a compliance manager last year to look at safety and labor requirements and tell him what changes were needed.

In March, his compliance manager placed before him a hefty tome of Bangladeshi labor laws, listing things like the fact that workers are entitled to 14 sick days a year and 11 days to celebrate festivals, among other holidays.

That was news to Mr. Rahman. "I knew about giving Fridays off," he says, referring to the Muslim religious day. "I didn't know about all these other holidays." He also hadn't always been paying minimum wage, he said, and he had been paying overtime at the same rate as regular hours, not at a higher rate as stipulated.

Mr. Rahman says he has fixed many of these things. And a spot-check with some workers corroborated that. One female employee said that conditions at Mr. Rahman's factory weren't great when she first joined at the beginning of the year. "Now, many things have changed," she said.

Wages rose and overtime pay improved, she said. And recently she participated in a fire drill, the only one she remembers. "There's a bell," she said, "then we all have to go out."

Another employee, who had begun working at the factory in April, said the workplace was better than her previous one because there was "no hitting."

Of Mr. Rahman, she said, "He's not a bad guy." He is usually present, and "he has told us that if the line chief isn't giving you days off, you come to me."

In June, Mr. Rahman said he was reviewing wages again, noting that the raises he gave earlier this year had reduced employee turnover, a problem that plagues many firms. But he said the changes he has made this year—worker raises, hiring a doctor to be present once a week, and checking and refilling fire extinguishers every month—have already cost him 400,000 taka in extra monthly costs.

"I always keep this in my mind," he says. "Today my business is doing well, tomorrow my business can fail."

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